Archive for December, 2011

The latest update of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog is now available. It provides information about new works related to scholarly electronic publishing, such as books, e-prints, journal articles, magazine articles, technical reports, and white papers.

Digital Scholarship published the below works in 2011. From January 1, 2011 through November 30, 2011, Digital Scholarship had over 2.4 million visitors from 211 counties and over 11.4 million file requests, including over 8.8 million page views.

January 17, 2011. Published version 2 of the Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography.

October 30, 2011. Published version 80 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography. This version marked the fifteenth year of publication of the bibliography, which was established on October 25, 1996.

Reporting to the Head, Library Systems Division the incumbent monitors, identifies and communicates innovations in the uses of the web and recommends and implements new and emerging web-based technologies and services for our environment; provides creative and technical expertise to design, develop, manage and support innovative web-based information services and systems. Working collaboratively with Library staff, the Web Initiatives Librarian leads and coordinates the creation and enhancement of the Library Web site and the staff Intranet.

In this article I would like to make the case that a change in the delivery of scientific content and in the business models for delivering scholarly communication was inevitable from the moment journals moved online, even if much of this change is yet to come. By applying a thesis put forth by Chris Anderson in his 2009 book Free, I will argue that given that scholarly journals are now digital products, they are subject to very different economic principles and social forces than their print ancestors.

Provides leadership and guidance in the development and implementation of data management strategies that will support discovery, access, management, and preservation of the Libraries' and University's physical and digital assets and resources. Advises all metadata creation activities throughout the libraries and selects, designs, adapts and maintains appropriate metadata schemas, controlled vocabularies and data dictionaries to facilitate access to resources in the libraries' catalog, digital collections and institutional repository; Performs original and complex metadata creation; Tracks developments in metadata schemas and leads the ongoing development and implementation of metadata standards and best practices within the libraries and across the university; Assists in setting policies, priorities and practices for the production, management and preservation of digital content; Develops best practices for authority control; Supports archival, e-records management and scholarly communication programs; Provides consultative support and expertise to GVSU faculty and academic units on research projects to address their data management needs, including the development of data management plans.

Data provides the evidence for the published body of scientific knowledge, which is the foundation for all scientific progress. The more data is made openly available in a useful manner, the greater the level of transparency and reproducibility and hence the more efficient the scientific process becomes, to the benefit of society. This viewpoint is becoming mainstream among many funders, publishers, scientists, and other stakeholders in research, but barriers to achieving widespread publication of open data remain. The Open Data in Science working group at the Open Knowledge Foundation is a community that works to develop tools, applications, datasets, and guidelines to promote the open sharing of scientific data. This article focuses on the Open Knowledge Definition and the Panton Principles for Open Data in Science. We also discuss some of the tools the group has developed to facilitate the generation and use of open data and the potential uses that we hope will encourage further movement towards an open scientific knowledge commons.

The North Carolina State University Libraries are recruiting an Emerging Technology Services Librarian. Required degree: "ALA-accredited MLS or equivalent advanced degree in library or information science."

We related the reluctance to share research data for reanalysis to 1148 statistically significant results reported in 49 papers published in two major psychology journals. We found the reluctance to share data to be associated with weaker evidence (against the null hypothesis of no effect) and a higher prevalence of apparent errors in the reporting of statistical results. The unwillingness to share data was particularly clear when reporting errors had a bearing on statistical significance.

The Cornell University Library is recruiting an arXiv Senior Administrator/Project Associate II. Duration: "three-year appointment with the possibility of renewal." Required degree: "Master's or doctorate degree and research experience in a physical science, engineering, computer science, mathematics, or information science."

The arXiv Senior Administrator (SA) will be responsible for overseeing arXiv's moderation, administration, and user-support processes. Responsibilities include: help to ensure the appropriateness of submissions and the quality standards of arXiv; make moderation decisions based on arXiv policy and the specifics of any particular case; facilitate discussion of moderation questions or policy with subject experts; investigate appeals from users regarding moderation decisions; respond to all users and moderators in a timely and courteous fashion; liaise with subject advisory committees and recruit moderators when necessary; perform daily arXiv administration tasks and user-support activities as needed; provide oversight and support of the daily arXiv administration process and its administrators. The SA will ensure that arXiv administrative processes and procedures follow arXiv policy, and that policy is applied consistently and fairly; he/she will recognize gaps in arXiv policy, and initiate new policy development with others when needed, keeping policy up-to-date and in sync with arXiv's evolving governance model.

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published Digital Humanities, SPEC Kit 326, which provides a snapshot of research library experiences with digital scholarship centers or services that support the humanities (e.g., history, art, music, film, literature, philosophy, religion, etc.) and the benefits and challenges of hosting them. The survey asked ARL libraries about the organization of these services, how they are staffed and funded, what services they offer and to whom, what technical infrastructure is provided, whether the library manages or archives the digital resources produced, and how services are assessed, among other questions. . . .